Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/261

fore, this is a night for serious and solemn meditation, and no doubt there are many such pious spirits among those who are wending their way up the ascent to the citadel of Cairo and to the great mosque, whose slender minarets stand out to-night in unwonted clarity through the darkness, encircled, each of them, with a double ring of lights. Not so, however, with the majority of the crowd which surrounds us at the principal entrance into the buildings. Their errand is either that of the ordinary European sightseer, or of the native who lives by ministering to his wants. They are assembled to witness the State visit regularly paid by the Khedive on this night of the year to the mosque of Mohammed Ali, and they are waiting till he comes out, after the due performance of his devotions. Like most acts of homage paid by temporal potentates to Eternal Powers, it is appropriately limited in point of time; and, after no very severe trial of our patience, Abbas Pasha, who has developed into a young man of sin-